Re: Blood and Iron

The air was cold, but it burned with fire.

Not the fire of war, but something older, deeper: the fire of righteous fury, the kind that only smoldered in a person long humiliated, long denied their destiny.

Nearlyr a decade had passed since the French Civil War had ended. The streets of France bore scars of both foreign boots and domestic shame.

But at long last, they echoed again, not with despair, but with purpose.

A crowd gathered at the foot of the Place de la République, stretching from the steps of the broken Assemblée Nationale to the shadowed edge of Notre-Dame.

Frenchmen from all corners of the fractured nation had come to hear the man whose name had once been a whisper in the corridors of exiles.

General Charles de Gaulle stood atop a hastily raised platform, the tricolor fluttering behind him in the cold wind.

Soldiers of the Gallian Militia, and Réveil de France, bearing neither royalist lilies nor the insignias of Pétain's collaborationist army, ringed the crowd like silent sentinels.

De Gaulle did not smile. He did not raise his hands in pleasantries. He spoke.

"Citizens of France. Sons of Gaul. Patriots of a betrayed and broken motherland."

The voice was rough, tired. Hardened by exile and war. But it carried across the plaza with unnatural clarity.

"Today, we end a lie."

Murmurs rippled through the crowd. De Gaulle continued.

"For nearly a decade, a charade has worn the crown of France. Marshal Philippe Pétain, once a soldier, now a dog of Berlin, has fled this land like a rat when the weight of his betrayal came due. He called himself a servant of the people. I call him what he is: a coward."

Gasps echoed. A few shouted affirmations. More followed.

"He sold our dignity to the German Empire in exchange for personal safety. He offered up our lands and bowed to the Reich as if we were no longer a sovereign people, but chattel to be handed from one tyrant to another."

De Gaulle paused, letting the silence settle like snow.

"But no more."

He raised a hand, and behind him, the veil dropped. A massive banner unfurled: a clean tricolor with a bold numeral stitched in its heart — V.

"Today, by the will of the French people, by the blood of our martyrs, and by the mandate of history, I proclaim the birth of a new France. The true France."

A roar surged through the crowd.

"We declare the end of the false republic; the regime of cowardice, of betrayal, of compromise. We bury it with the ashes of Versailles, with the filth of Pétain, with the stench of submission. In its place, we raise the standard of the Fifth Republic!"

Trumpets flared. Artillery boomed from across the Seine. The Eiffel Tower lit up with waves of red, white, and blue.

De Gaulle pressed on, his eyes cold with vision.

"Under this new republic, there will be no more humiliation. No more occupation. No more borders drawn by foreign cowards in palaces across the Channel or the Rhine. France shall be indivisible, sovereign, and proud once more."

The crowd surged. Veterans threw their caps into the air. Women wept. Children shouted the name: "De Gaulle! De Gaulle!"

"We shall reclaim all that was stolen. Not merely land; but our pride! Our legacy. Our birthright. The Revolution of 1789 lives again in our veins. But this time, we wield not only ideals, but steel."

He paused again, and this time his gaze shifted to the cameras broadcasting across the recovering republic.

"To our allies abroad, know this: France returns not as a beggar, but as a lion. To our enemies: you thought us broken. But we are French. We do not die. We endure. We resist. We return."

He stepped down, and silence held for only a breath before the crowd exploded into chants. The Fifth Republic had no formal vote, no parliamentary birth. It was forged, like the first, in fire.

The first act of the new republic? The arrest in absentia of Marshal Philippe Pétain for treason.

The second? A national day of mourning for the France that had been.

And the third?

A decree.

"France will rise again. And the world shall tremble when she does."

Thus began the resurgence.

Thus began the march.

All the while, Henri d'Orleans watched in the crowd, just another citizen. Shaking his head with lament.

"The poor fools... They now not the wrath they conjure for us all."

It was a silent sentiment that he was not alone in sharing. Among the cheering crowds, and the raised banners of the new republic, were many who realized what de Gaulle's words meant.

A generation of men had fought, bled, and died in the trenches of the great war, and those that followed in the civil war after.

But the older generations still remembered the madness of the Third Republic, which refused to kneel, refused to surrender, refused to submit, even when they had to arm school children to defend Paris.

A battle never waged, not because it had actually worked in dettering the enemy from attacking. But because the Germans had already advanced beyond such primitive tactics.

Instead, they chose to light a ring a fire around the city, and threatened to burn it all to ash if the Republic did not yield.

Even with the entire history and heritage of their very nation on the line, the politicians who had yet to flee the country let the outskirts burn before finally cooler heads prevailed and the white flag was raised.

It was no surprise that having witnessed this, and understanding the fact that the Germans had been in a time of peace to expand and grow stronger while their nation bled that many among the older generations were far from servant over the proclamation.

They knew that the young would drag them into another war they could not win. And when that happened, may God have mercy on them all. May God have mercy on France.